United States Post Office Department
The United States Post Office Department (USPOD; also known as the Post Office or U.S. Mail) was the predecessor of the United States Postal Service, established in 1792. From 1872 to 1971, it was officially in the form of a Cabinet department. It was headed by the postmaster general.
This article is about the postal agency that existed prior to 1971. For the current postal agency in the United States, see United States Postal Service.Postal system overview
February 20, 1792
July 1, 1971
The Postal Service Act, signed by U.S. president George Washington on February 20, 1792, established the department. Postmaster General John McLean, in office from 1823 to 1829, was the first to call it the Post Office Department rather than just the "Post Office." The organization received a boost in prestige when President Andrew Jackson invited his postmaster general, William T. Barry, to sit as a member of the Cabinet in 1829.[1] The Post Office Act of 1872 (17 Stat. 283) elevated the Post Office Department to Cabinet status.[2]
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), postal services in the Confederate States of America were provided by the Confederate States of America Post-office Department, headed by Postmaster General John Henninger Reagan. It faced insurmountable obstacles, especially the requirement that it not run a deficit.[3]
The Postal Reorganization Act was signed by President Richard Nixon on August 12, 1970. It replaced the cabinet-level Post Office Department with the independent United States Postal Service on July 1, 1971. The regulatory role of the postal services was then transferred to the Postal Regulatory Commission.
The American Revolution[edit]
Before the Revolution, there was only a trickle of business or governmental correspondence between the colonies. Most of the mail went back and forth to counting houses and government offices in London. The revolution made Philadelphia, the seat of the Continental Congress, the information hub of the new nation. News, new laws, political intelligence, and military orders circulated with a new urgency, and a postal system was necessary. Journalists took the lead, securing post office legislation that allowed them to reach their subscribers at very low cost, and to exchange news from newspapers between the thirteen states. Overthrowing the London-oriented imperial postal service in 1774–1775, printers enlisted merchants and the new political leadership, and created a new postal system.[5] The United States Post Office (USPO) was created on July 26, 1775, by decree of the Second Continental Congress.[6] Benjamin Franklin headed it briefly.
Before the Revolution, individuals like Benjamin Franklin and William Goddard were the colonial postmasters who managed the mails then and were the general architects of a postal system that started out as an alternative to the Crown Post.